


I Want To Hate You But I Can't

by HelAbernathy



Category: Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Angst, Dream Smp, Dream has battle scars and no one can convince me otherwise, M/M, Minecraft but in real life, Pandora's Vault, Prison Arc, Scars, Tension, prison bf
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-30
Updated: 2021-01-30
Packaged: 2021-03-16 20:35:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,943
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29088438
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HelAbernathy/pseuds/HelAbernathy
Summary: “You wouldn’t understand.”“Of course I wouldn’t. WhatdoI understand? I can barely comprehend what has been happening the past few weeks, god, months. You know how hard I’ve tried to hate you? How hard I’ve tried to fill my heart with hatred and anger? The anger-thing worked, I’m incredibly angry with you. But I can’t hate you and that’s not fair. God, I could punch you right now.” Georges eyes filled with tears. Dream stood up and left his notebook on the floor.“Do it.”-George pays Dream a visit in the prison in the hopes of clearing his feelings.
Relationships: Clay | Dream/GeorgeNotFound (Video Blogging RPF)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 122
Collections: Completed stories I've read





	I Want To Hate You But I Can't

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, all the Dream prison arc fan art that has been appearing on my timeline has inspired me to write this little one-shot. It is important to know that this story is about the characters of the DSMP, not the real life people who play them.  
> Basically Minecraft but make it real.  
> Enjoy :)

The colossal body of the prison could be seen miles away, threatening, lingering, constantly reminding of its strength. The sun rose an hour ago but the blackstone walls and iron bars blocked off any light and left George standing in the shadows in front of the entrance. The air was fresh and clean. It had rained last night and the tall grass beneath his feet was still wet, its dampness slowly creeping into his shoes. Nobody cared to mow the lawn around here, too few people came this close to the prison. At the beginning, when it was still new and strange, had basically appeared overnight, everyone wanted to take a look at the titan that was this building. But now, weeks after seeing it every day, glooming over the server, it had become a familiar sight. George pulled his coat closer around his body, crossing his arms.

“You sure, he’s coming?”, Sam asked, leaning against the walls of the little entrance building, his voice marked by doubt and a pinch of pity. George nodded. 

“Yeah, he’s just always late.” Sam didn’t answer, only nodded but George could see that he didn’t believe him. He was thankful that he didn’t keep pushing but turned his attention to adjusting the sword on his belt and the trident behind his back. It had taken George a lot of convincing for Sapnap to agree to visit Dream even though he swore to never see _that green bastard_ again. They didn’t argue for hours just for Sapnap to bail last minute. That just wouldn’t be fair. George couldn’t use another friend abandoning him. The minutes passed and he grew impatient. He started pacing around, leaving trails in the grass, sighing, turning to Sam to say something but deciding against it, going to the trench that separated the strip of land he was standing on from the prison. He looked down at his own reflection but could only see sleepless nights and pointless arguments. 

“I think, he’s coming.”, Sam pulled George out of his staring contest with himself. He turned around and saw his friend appear behind a tree. Finally. Clearing his throat, he went back to the entrance and watched Sapnap make his way over the beach, through abandoned deck chairs and parasols. 

“I started to think you got put in the prison as well.”, George snarled as soon as he was in hearing range. 

“Something came up.” George’s only reaction was to nod. 

“Are we ready?”, Sam raised an eyebrow and looked back and forth between the two visitors. George glanced over to Sapnap, in the hopes of finding some sort of reassurance or  
comfort in his eyes but his look was fixed onto Sam, nodding. 

“Alright then.”, as soon as he stepped into the open hall that was the entrance, his presence changed. He straightened himself, somehow his shoulders looked broader and the sword at his side sharper. His eyes were greener than before and his look frightened George. That wasn’t Sam anymore. It was _The Warden_. He swallowed. This wasn’t a joke, this wasn’t a half-hearted attempt to bring order onto this server by building some ugly shack and pronouncing it jail. This was serious. 

The portal in front of them lit with a noise that sent a shiver down his spine. This is it, there’s no turning back now. He looked at Sapnap again, this time he received an answer. There was something unsettling in his eyes that George couldn’t decipher. There had been a change in their friendship ever since Dream got imprisoned. It wasn’t like this when they first turned away from Dream. If anything, they grew closer, but now- George couldn’t name it. It shouldn’t be like this. Dreams actions and their logical consequences shouldn’t have an effect on their friendship. Maybe the days of the Dream Team were over but that didn’t mean that the friendship between him and Sapnap had to end. That wouldn’t be fair.  
On the other end of the portal, they were greeted again by Sam who went through before them. He stood behind a blackstone counter, a couple of lose pages in his hand. 

“Welcome to Pandora’s Vault.” This hall could have been the foyer to a fancy hotel or an overpriced restaurant, would there have been any windows. They were in. Maybe it was the exhaustion of the previous nights, maybe it was the mining fatigue doing its work but George felt drained. He could practically feel the thickness of the walls pushing him deeper into the prison, ready to crush him in the middle. 

They signed the contracts Sam had given them without a single word. Tommy had basically been shouting the details of the prison and the process to get in over the entire server, telling everyone, the circumstances he went through to get to Dream where abhorrent but he endured them anyways because _he ain’t no pussy_. George had been avoiding the child. Primarily because you don’t drink tea with people who blow up your house, but also because he didn’t want to hear anything about Dream. And now he was here, about to walk into his cell, expecting- what was he expecting? Remorse? Regret? Hell, an excuse? None of the above, George wasn’t an idiot. 

“How is Quackity?”, he asked just to break the insufferable silence that laid heavily on them as they walked through the never-ending corridors. 

“Good.”

“Good.” It was weird, they’ve played it through beforehand, talked about how this dreaded day would play out and yet it was very different once they had passed the borders of the prison grounds. This was a different world. “And Karl?” 

“He’s managing.”

“Good.” This was pointless. George hadn’t been around much the last few weeks, mostly kept to himself and stayed in his house. Only at night when no one was awake, when no one could bother him, he set foot onto the main roads. Walked the Prime Path in silence, climbed up Erets towers to watch the stars, his hand on the empty stone next to him. Sometimes he ventured into the crater of L’Manburg, but quickly found his way out as soon as weird red vines start to sprout out of the exposed bedrock. Whatever that was about. The silence of the night was better than the kids screaming about whatever foolish project they’ve started now or the awkward conversations people tried to have with him. The day after the imprisonment, people started treating George like a curiosity, stared at him, waiting for him to say something about the prison, its only inmate. He never officially stated what he thought about Dream being locked up. He couldn’t even answer that for himself. 

They were patted down a dozen times, had to prove that they didn’t bring anything into the prison and had to go through other weird security checks whose concepts George didn’t understand. He couldn’t tell if they were close or still a billion miles away from the main cell. He didn’t even know for how long they’ve wandered this labyrinth, time became an unreliable narrator in these walls. Not a single word had been spoken, other than unmistakable orders from Sam. 

“Last room.”, he let them know as they walked into a room sectioned off by lava on one side, “Stand there.” They obeyed and positioned themselves in front of the slowly flowing magma, whose heat made the air flicker. It was only then that George noticed the old golden key hanging around Sam’s neck. It didn’t look like it would have any role in such a highly advanced prison, like it was just a symbol for the power Sam held. He was the king and this his castle. He turned his back at Sam and starred back into the lava, hypnotized by the heat and the patterns it created as it passed them. It began to dawn on him that Dream was only a few steps away. He was behind this lava, sitting in his cell, waiting, thinking, existing. George hadn’t asked if he knew that they were coming but, in the end, it didn’t matter. Sapnap had started to tap his feet on the ground and his fingers on his arm. It drove George crazy. 

“Can you stop that?”, he snapped even though he was just as nervous as Sapnap. As the lava gradually disappeared, George started to chew on his lips. He had thought about this, about what he would see, what he would think but every precaution he had taken, jumped out the window as the lava vanished. It was like Tommy had described it. A small obsidian box in the middle of a lava lake. A row of bars covered the front, partially blocking the view on the person that was sitting in the cell. 

“I’m sending you over there now. If you want to get back, just call for me, the cell is monitored, so I can hear you. I can also see what’s happening in there.”, he looked at George for a second, then went into another room. 

“What was he implying?”, George murmured and Sapnap just looked at him knowingly. 

“Oh, fuck you both.”, he exclaimed and there was something so odd about this situation that he let out a desperate laugh. Sapnap joined in and there was a certain relief in laughing in this otherwise dead-serious situation. It released some of the tension that had been building up. Maybe gallows humor was a side-effect of entering a prison that radiated fear and horror.

“How did we end up here?”, Sapnap asked and sighed. 

“Hell, if I knew.” The platform underneath them started to move, Sapnap cursed. The meters between the room and the cell seemed to be endless but as soon as they arrived, George wished they would have been longer. Immediately upon stepping off, the platform moved back and lava started pouring down again. They were trapped, cut off from the world. The bars retracted. Dream. He was different. His blonde hair was disorganized, it had grown longer since George last saw him and was hanging in his face, covering his eyes as he looked down on the notebook in his hand. He was sitting next to the wall, clothed in an orange prison overall, his feet bare and dirty from the obsidian. Sapnap seemed to be equally shocked. 

“Hello.”, hearing this voice, this voice, which was way too familiar to George, this voice which had been haunting him in his dreams, this voice which was the reason why he didn’t want to sleep, this voice alone threw George off and he hoped for Sapnap to do the talking. Thankfully he did.

“Hello Dream.” 

“Hello Sapnap. Congratulations. I hope you are content with seeing me behind bars.”, he didn’t look up but kept scribbling in the book in his lap. 

“I see you made yourself at home.” George looked around and couldn’t quite see what Sapnap meant. The walls were bare, obviously, and besides a clock, a sink, a small chest and something that could be called a toilet, there wasn’t much in here. Not even a bed. 

“Oh, very. I commissioned this place after all, didn’t I?” The overall he was wearing was short-sleeved and revealed the large and small battle scars on his arms. Next to the ones George had traced over and over, knew better than his own skin, were new ones. His skin was red around the cuts which seemed to be a few weeks old and would soon turn into bulging scars. There was a moment of silence, only disturbed by the lava plopping behind them and the pencil on the pages of the notebook. Sapnap let out desperate laugh. 

“Why? Why, Dream? What is this?”, he turned 360 degrees, lifted his arms in a lack of understanding and let them fall back down, “This is all just part of your stupid game, isn’t it?” There was a spike of anger in his voice. This time, Dream looked up, pushed the hair out of his face. Deep eye bags accompanied his eyes which were somehow still as bright and green as they always had been. He only looked at Sapnap, George was invisible. A sharp pain went through his chest, at the same he was glad that Dream didn’t look at him. He didn’t know if he had the strength to feel Dreams gorgon gaze on him. That was one of the things that he used to love about him. When Dream looked at someone, he really looked at someone. He saw them as they were, without being distracted by the world around them. He saw through them, he saw the person, not the vessel they were in. But now he would just feel exposed, naked, vulnerable. 

Dream didn’t say anything, so Sapnap continued, talking himself into a rage. 

“When did everything become a game to you? When did Tommy become your favorite toy, what made chasing after discs like a dog so goddamn interesting?”

“You don’t get it.” 

“No, Dream, I don’t. I don’t get it. Because unlike you, I still maintained some of my sanity and didn’t threw it all away for what? Wh- I don’t- why?”, again he threw his arms in the air in disbelieve and started pacing around the cell, “Do these stupid games give you an edge? Does blowing up shit and collecting black mail do it for you? Fucking hell.”, he ran his hands through his hair, messing up the black locks. There was no motion in Dreams face. No emotion, no reaction. 

“When did these fucking games become more important than your friends, than George, than me, than us?” There it was, that feared attention, that dreaded look. Dream shifted his focus towards George, his eyes staring deep into his soul. He had promised himself that that wouldn’t happen, that he wouldn’t let Dream _see_ him. This look did something with George, it shifted a thing inside him, made him relive a thousand memories in a heartbeat. He wanted to look away but forced himself not to. Dream focused his attention back onto Sapnap and it felt like the dagger hovering over Georges throat was pulled away. 

“I thought, I got rid of all of my friends.” The pain was back, digging deeper into his chest. Sapnaps expression was full with dismay. 

“You know what, Dream? Fuck you. Fuck you and your games and whatever shit you’re pulling right now. You know, after I sided with Tommy and Tubbo and basically everyone else on this server, after we put you in here”, he vaguely gestured around the cell, “I had my doubts.” This was certainly new. “I actually felt guilty, I thought that maybe dying twice would bring some sense into you, that maybe, after this stupid disc thing was over, you would’ve changed. I thought that I was a bad person for putting you in isolation, for leaving you here. But as I see it now, I couldn’t have done a better thing. You deserve to be in here. You and your eternal egoism deserve to rot in this cell.” 

“Do you also want to say something or is Sapnap the only one with a tongue in this matter?”, he didn’t even react to Sapnap but looked directly at George. Somewhen during his speech, George had crossed his arms in front of his body, he felt dangerously small.

“Sap is right.”, he agreed, his voice nothing more than a whisper, “You are selfish. Why did you have to destroy everything?”, he didn’t expect an answer, “You know, they started rebuilding the community house.” 

“The one that you blew up.”, Sapnap added, “What was that about anyways? And that weird vault-thing? Your evil lair? Is this your attempt to play the villain to Tommy’s hero-complex?” Sapnap had taken over again and George didn’t want to stop or interrupt him. For being so resilient to come here, he had a lot to say. 

“If you think so.” 

Sapnap seemed completely done with this conversation, this interaction, this all of it. 

“You know what, I’m sick of your pseudo-one-liners. If you don’t have anything useful to say for yourself, this conversation is over.”, silence, “Alright, I’m done, guard!” For a while, nothing happened but then the bars rose again, cutting them off from Dream. George took one step back in surprise, almost resulting in him falling into the lava if he hadn’t stumbled forward in the last moment. It might have been the wiggling vision caused by the heat but for a moment he thought that Dream had twitched the tiniest bit. The lava vanished and the platform appeared. Sapnap walked onto it. 

“Are you coming?”, he raised his eyebrows at George. 

“Go ahead, I’m coming in a bit.”

“Alright.”, he looked one last time into the cell. It seemed like he wanted to say something, but didn’t. 

“Bye, Sapnap.”

He descended towards the other end of the room, the lava filling the room behind him. Once they were alone, the bars disappeared again. For a while, George kept looking at the lava, hoping to see some sort of explanation for all of this in the evenly flowing magma. 

“Is this what you came here for? To yell at me?” George turned around. Dream had closed his book and folded his hands on his lap. 

“Mainly.”, he didn’t intend to speak to him alone, that was not part of the plan but Sapnap did most of the talking and some part of him still had a lot to say. George looked down at his feet, then back up at Dream who still looked bigger even when sitting down, than George felt in this moment, “I really want to hate you. You and the things you did, I do hate the things you did but I want to hate you, because you hate me and- “

“I don’t.” There was a shift in Dreams voice. A minute ago, it had been filled with pride and arrogance but now it was just- Dream. 

“Yes, you do. The things you did made that very clear. You hate us, you hate me, you hate Sapnap.” 

“I don’t hate you, I- “ 

“You what?” 

“You wouldn’t understand.”

“Of course I wouldn’t. What _do_ I understand? I can barely comprehend what has been happening the past few weeks, god, months. You know how hard I’ve tried to hate you? How hard I’ve tried to fill my heart with hatred and anger? The anger-thing worked, I’m incredibly angry with you. But I can’t hate you and that’s not fair. God, I could punch you right now.” His eyes filled with tears. Dream stood up and left his notebook on the floor. 

“Do it.” 

“What?

“Punch me.”

“What kind of sick game is this again?”, George was tired of all of this. Of Dream not taking anything serious, of his missing hatred for him, of himself, of this pot of emotions boiling in him, of all of these conflicting thoughts screaming to be heard. He had always been the most emotional of the trio, the one everyone could see through and he hated himself for it.

“None. Hit me.”

“I’m not going to hit you.”

“Hit me.”

“Dream- “

“Come on, hit me.” Dream took one step forward.

“No- “

“Hit me!”, Dream took another step and before George knew what was happening, he slapped Dream across the face with a force he didn’t knew was in him. Dreams head turned to the side and he clenched his jaw. All of a sudden, Georges mind was silent. No more shouting thoughts, no more crying feelings, nothing. He didn’t know what to do with this silence. Right now, primal acts like touch seemed like a much better option than thinking. He reached for Dreams arms and observed the fairly fresh wounds. Carefully he traced the healing cuts with his fingers. 

“Tommy.”, Dream explained. George could feel his gaze on his head, so he didn’t look up. This also wasn’t part of his plan, getting this physically close to Dream was not part of his agenda. “He was a little bit more precise the second time.” He unzipped his overall and pulled the neck of his shirt down to expose a rough cut right over his heart. George gasped. He knew that Dream had lost two of his lives that day in the vault but he didn’t think they would leave marks like this. When George was assassinated, a red stroke around his neck had been visible for a couple of weeks before it faded into nothingness. This was different. It looked _brutal_. Repulsed and time drawn in at the same time, he stepped closer, laid a hand on the slowly forming scar. 

“How- “

“Axe.” Pure horror in his eyes, he looked up at Dream who was a lot closer that he thought. As the seconds passed, Georges mind was repopulated by thoughts and feelings which made him question what he was doing here. 

“I’m sorry.”, he couldn’t think of a better answer and pushed Dream away, holding him at armlength but didn’t take his hand from his chest. For a moment, he dared to focus on the heartbeat beneath his palm, to let his mind wander off to bright fields and white beaches and tree houses. The upcoming memories and feelings scared him, so he pulled back his hand. He didn’t come here to relive past times, times that had long passed. Why was he here? Did he hope that Dream had changed, that he would be his old self again? It was like Sapnap had said, he had hoped that _dying_ would change his priorities in life. Or maybe he already knew that things were hopeless, that Dream was way to obsessed with his game, addicted to power, to playing god. Maybe, he knew that Dream was beyond saving and had moved on from friendships, from acquaintances, from attachments, from him. Maybe, he wanted to visit him to find closure, to end this chaotic chapter of his life. Wouldn’t that be his best option? To turn around and leave. 

“I should go.”, his voice was hoarse. 

“Probably.” It was Georges turn to call for Sam but he didn’t. For an instant, he just stared at Dream, then swallowed and looked up towards the camera in one corner. 

“Sam!” The bars rose, cutting them off. The silence between them was appalling but neither of them was able to find the right words. Probably because there weren’t any words in the English language that would have been fitting for this situation. Without a warning, Dream leapt forward, reached through the bars, grabbed George by the collar, pulled him against the metal and kissed him. The iron against his cheeks was cold but Dreams lips were warm, it felt like they burned him. The kiss they shared was full of pain and suffering, tearing at his chest. This whole time Dream hadn’t shown a single emotion but now it seemed like he shared everything he had ever felt with George just by kissing him. It destroyed George. He didn’t want to pull away, despite the feeling, that this kiss would leave a scar if it lasted any longer. Hot tears ran down his face, leaving a scorched trail behind them. There was something poetic in this. The lover’s last kiss, obstructed but not prevented by iron bars and betrayal. George pulled away, the absence of Dreams touch made him shiver. He didn’t have the strength to say anything else, he was just exhausted. As he stepped onto the platform, he locked eyes with Dream one last time. 

“Goodbye, George.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! It has been a hot minute since I've written fan fiction, so I might be a little rusty. Comments and Kudos are greatly appreciated.


End file.
